BENNETT PLEADS GUILTY TO FOUR MURDERS IN CRAB ORCHARD, WILL DIE IN PRISON

A Tennessee convict pleaded guilty Wednesday to killing four young people on Cumberland County’s Renegade Mountain in 2013, garnering a sentence that calls for him to die behind bars.

Jacob Allen Bennett, 29, was charged in the September 2013 botched drug deal that killed 22-year-old Rikki Jacobsen, 17-year-olds Dominic Davis and Steven Presley and 16-year-old John Lajeunesse. The victims were found shot to death in a car on a rural road in Crab Orchard.

Bennett pleaded guilty to four counts of felony murder and two counts of attempted aggravated robbery, records show. In an agreement with the prosecution, he received four consecutive sentences of life without the possibility of parole for the killings, records show.

Judge David Patterson accepted the plea.

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In recent weeks, while consulting family members, the prosecution began considering with the defense the possibility of life without parole for Bennett.

Dunaway said most family members approved of such a sentence. The district attorney’s office would not have

purused such a plea agreement without family approval, he said.

“He is never going to be eligible for parole and will spend the rest of his breathing days in prison,” Bryant said.

Bennett’s girlfriend Brittany Moser also is charged in the killings.

She is awaiting prosecution in Cumberland County Criminal Court, according to court officials. Authorities say Moser was with Bennett at the time of the shooting, but didn’t play a role in the deaths.

Bennett was on parole at the time of the Sept. 11, 2013, murders.

After the killings he was charged with four counts of premeditated murder, four counts of felony murder and two counts of aggravated robbery. Moser was charged with four counts of felony murder and two counts of attempted aggravated robbery.

He’s been in custody since September 2013. He’s being held at River Bend Maximum Security Prison, according to prosecutors.

CAREER OF CRIME

Bennett has a record that dates to age 12 when he lived in Florida, records showed.

At age 12, he was accused of burglary, larceny and damage to property more than $1,000.

By 2009, Bennett was in Tennessee. In March 2010, he pleaded guilty to several charges in connection with a Fentress County burglary and received a prison sentence.

He was released on parole. Records show he was accused of violating parole terms, failing a drug test, for example, before the killings but no action was taken to bring him back into custody.

After the September 2013 homicides, officers issued an emergency parole violation warrant.

A Tennessee Department of Correction spokeswoman said at the time that Bennett had been on a medium supervision level and was in substantial compliance at the time of the homicides.

After his arrest, Bennett tried to plead guilty during an arraignment before Patterson on Sept. 20.

Patterson then appointed a lawyer for him, and the lawyer corrected the plea to “not guilty.”